If You Want To Earn Money From Your Writing, Don't Do This

I write a lot of articles and blog posts about how to write quickly.

This isn't because I think that speed is the most important thing (although it is really important), but because I find that the faster I write, the better I write.

I believe it's because when I write quickly it turns off my internal critic, the little voice in my head that wants to edit as I write and keeps telling me that I'm going off track or that my grammar isn't right.

But when I start writing and don't stop, the inner critic in my head can't be heard.

I also set a timer when I write, for about 25 or 30 minutes, so that I'm writing against the clock which helps to keep me going.

So when I talk about writing quickly, I'm talking about writing well, not writing badly.

By all means write as fast as you can, but never EVER write badly.

Don't think that fast writing is good writing. Fast writing simply means you can write more and turn off the inner critic/editor at the same time.

Bad writing is one of the things that ruins writers' chances when they think that just because they can self publish everything they write, they can write garbage.

Don't ever do that.

The Internet is full of book reviews and if you get a lot of bad ones, no one will want to buy your books.

If you want to know if your writing is good, ask yourself if you'd be satisfied with it if you were sending it to a publishing company. Would you send them your manuscript, or would you have written it better or edited it more?

So when you write, do your best writing, do it quickly, don't edit as you write, edit and proof it professionally, and then publish it and get on with your next book.

Writers write, so keep on writing and remember, never write anything but your best.

Selling One Million Books

I think I might have mentioned it lately (perhaps a dozen or more times a week) that I want to pull back on the online writing and write more books.

Changing what kind of writer we are can be scary because we don't know if it will work and bring in the same amount of income as our previous writing does.

And now is not a great financial time for me to mess with my income because I am the only wage earner between me and my husband, Dean, who is busy renovating our house. (Oh the expense of it all!)

Anyway, just when I needed a bit of inspiration and something to let me know that I'm on the right track, I came across an article about an author who writes supernatural thrillers.

His name is Scott Nicholson and over the last 7 years he has written and self published 30 novels and has achieved over one million sales.

I read it and immediately got out my calculator (well, my phone app that works as a calculator) and worked out that if this author earns just $2 per sale, his one million sales means he has averaged an income of over $285,000 a year.

$285-thousand!

Naturally he earned less in the first few years because he had less books published, but still, his sales are amazing. And he publishes his books as ebooks, paperbacks, and audio books (he mixes it up a bit).

What I took from this article is that it is possible to make a really good living as an author, as long as you're a good writer, can write compelling stories and are good at marketing and selling.

And because I've had so many years practise at all this, I'm sure I'll do fine.

Now...back to book writing.

You CAN Have It All

Recently I decided to change the type of writer I'd become.

You see, I had somehow become an online writer, working on my websites, writing articles and selling my own products as well as affiliate products and earning money through advertising.

This meant that I spent my days working on keywords and always checking on what my online competitors were doing.

But I wasn't happy.

So I decided to shut down most of my sites and concentrate more on book writing.

But...then I wondered if it's the right thing to do because mine is the only income and my husband is busy working at home everyday on our house renovations (which is a huge task). So we need enough money to not only live on, but to pay for the renovations too.

So was this a good time to follow my dream of being a full-time book author?

Then a read a really inspiring article written by one of the most prolific writers I know, Mridu Khullar Relph. This woman has one of the most amazing hard work ethics that I've ever seen.

Her article is called Writing Saved Me and in it she talks about how we are told (and we always believe) that we can't have it all. We can have a great life or a great career. Or we can write what we want and be as creative as we like, or write for the majority, but we can't do both if we want to earn money.

She says that none of this is true and that we can have it all.

But...we must own it on our own terms and own it all, the downs as well as the ups.

Where we are in our lives and in our writing careers is through the choices we have made so far, and if we're not happy where we've ended up, then we have the freedom and the control to change things.

But we have to be true to ourselves and forget about societal obligations, because we CAN have it all, if we want it badly enough.

And I do want it badly enough.

I want to write many books and earn money as an author.

And I do believe that if I'm true to myself and work hard, then the money will come.

So here I go...

How about you?

Are you living your dreams?